City of Bohane

Kevin Barry

2011 • Jonathan Cape

With City Of Bohane I tried to let loose. And in lots of different ways. I only realized as I was writing the first couple of chapters that it was set in the future. That was a very liberating thing—I realized I could do whatever the fuck I wanted. It’s an invented place but its language is sprung directly from working class speech in the cities I grew up in, Limerick and Cork. Those kinds of voices have never really shown up before in Irish literature. In terms of the language, I was trying to get it down on the page in a rush—I wanted it to be torrential—so the first draft was done in about thirteen weeks, with very little sleeping and eating.

— Kevin Barry

Novel English Language

City of Bohane

Kevin Barry

2011 • Jonathan Cape

With City Of Bohane I tried to let loose. And in lots of different ways. I only realized as I was writing the first couple of chapters that it was set in the future. That was a very liberating thing—I realized I could do whatever the fuck I wanted. It’s an invented place but its language is sprung directly from working class speech in the cities I grew up in, Limerick and Cork. Those kinds of voices have never really shown up before in Irish literature. In terms of the language, I was trying to get it down on the page in a rush—I wanted it to be torrential—so the first draft was done in about thirteen weeks, with very little sleeping and eating.